Martin Heller today shared his underwhelming impressions of his first experience visiting Second Life.
Under the headline, “PR in Second Life? Are They Kidding?,” his musings appear on the website of IDG’s soon-to-be Web-only Infoworld Magazine. Here are a few snippets from the tech-savvy reporter:
- “It still wasn’t a wonderful experience. ”
- “My avatar was surrounded by other avatars in various stages of dress and undress generally acting lost and typing stimulating things like ‘Where are you from?'”
- “I had a quick look at the list of the most popular places in the system by traffic, and they were pretty much all porn.”
I wonder whether Second Life has outspent its usefulness from a PR perspective? Gone are the days when the opening of an office or commercial enterprise merits media attention. Perhaps some philanthropic endeavor might be the new frontier. More on that in a subsequent post. Here are Mr. Heller’s closing thoughts:
“As far as I can tell, Second Life isn’t really work-safe, or even home-safe if you have children. I can’t imagine why IBM, Sun, and others are doing PR or developer communities in Second Life. I remember Jon Udell discussing PR in Second Life in his column last fall, and he made it sound credible. Am I missing something here?”
No, Martin, you’re not.